I stepped through. Whatever I’d been before lay in the dirt with the man whose last breath I had stolen.
Chapter5
Lazarus
The war changed us.
Weeks of fighting bled into months, and months into a year, until I could no longer tell one season from the next. Salvatore and I had marched into this furnace as boys, but the war beat us into men—stronger, harder, forged in a fire that didn’t relent. We stood shoulder to shoulder, best friends in name and in blood, but the heat shaped us differently.
The war gave me endurance. It gave Salvatore something else—something darker. Where I fought to endure, he fought to devour. Where I clung to the promise of going home, he clung to the taste of blood. The bond between us never broke, but I saw the shadow settle heavier on him with every passing battle.
The weeks stretched into an eternity of blood and noise. What had begun as a thunderous march toward glory dissolved into a crawl through filth and rot. Days blurred into nights, nights into nightmares, and then into something worse—empty spaces where time lost meaning.
The war dragged on like an unwelcome spirit clinging to our backs, whispering, clawing, feeding. We fought in rain that stung like needles, in mud that swallowed sandals and bodies whole, in heat so blistering it cracked the ground beneath us. We fought without food, without sleep, without warmth. Every dawn was another step into a red sea, and every dusk was crawling out again—bruised, hollow, half-alive.
The living were little better than the dead. And the dead… There were too many to remember.
My bones ached with every movement. My joints cracked like dry wood. My hands trembled at night from the strain of never letting go of my weapon. I had forgotten what silence sounded like. My mind had grown calloused to screams—ours, theirs, it didn’t matter anymore. Even the gods felt far away.
Still, we kept fighting.
Not because there was a choice. There was no leaving, no vanishing into the hills. There was only forward, only blood, only survival. The only way home was through the enemy, through the war.
And I had a reason.
Amara.
Her face lived in the shattered corners of my mind—the softness of her voice, the curve of her smile, the warmth in her gaze. She was my tether, my reason, the promise I carried into every battle. I had sworn to bring her back gold, to give us a life beyond this mire of blood and mud. That vow held me together when everything else threatened to unravel.
So, I kept fighting. For her. For home. For the promise of something beyond this endless war.
As twilight bled across the camp, bruising the sky gray and violet, we huddled around a fire that barely clung to life. Too exhausted to fear. Too stripped to hope. Its smoke spiraled thin, one breath away from vanishing—just like us.
Turtanu stood before us, arms folded, his face stoic. Behind him, thunder grumbled low, clouds swollen with storm light. He looked less like a man and more like the war-god himself—merciless, unbending.
But there would be no rain to cleanse this place.
No forgiveness.
Only blood.
Only survival.
And whatever hell came next.
“You two.”
His voice cracked across the yard like a whip, as rough as gravel. His finger stabbed the air like a spear, aimed squarely at Salvatore and me. “Step the fuck forward.”
My chest tightened. For a heartbeat, I thought we were being called out for punishment. But we had fought. We had bled. We had endured when others had fallen. That had to mean something.
“Us?” Salvatore’s voice was tight, his shoulders squared.
Turtanu’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see any other sorry bastards standing beside you, do you?”
Salvatore’s jaw clenched. “No, sir. I do not.”
“Then move your asses before I decide I’ve wasted my breath.”
